Organizational Behaviour Research in Rural Producers’ Cooperatives

Abstract

Cooperatives are important organizational forms helping millions of people, particularly in rural areas, to improve their socio-economic conditions. They are also unique in that they are member-centric business organizations with democratic control, where the shareholders are also users of their services. In this article, first, I discuss the importance of cooperatives as organizational forms, particularly the rural producers’ cooperatives (RPCs); second, analyze the research trends within the organizational behaviour (OB) area in the last one-and-half decade on RPCs; third, chart out directions for future research. The analysis suggests that cooperatives as organizational forms throw up special challenges to the OB researchers, as they are special types of organizations that incorporate business-like features of the investor-owned firms as well as the voluntary nature of nonprofits, thereby increasing the complexity of the context to make it an interesting area of research. For future research, OB researchers will have to go beyond the employee-centric research to include cooperative members as important constituent of the organization, specifically focussing on trust, commitment, organizational citizenship behaviour and leadership behaviour. The article identifies certain roadblocks in getting the attention of the researchers in the OB area and suggests certain ways to overcome these roadblocks.

Development of a Model for the Assessment of the Performance of Rural Producers’ Cooperatives: A Case Study of Isfahan Province, Iran

“…It may, thus, be claimed that management is the principal factor affecting the performance of such cooperatives. This is consonant with the reports by Biswas 2015;Hosseini et al 2014;Osmar and Wander 2021;MacLean and MacKinnon 2000;Mhembwe and Dube 2017;Pham 2022;Zarifian and Bahadori 2014). The presence or absence of similar factors determines whether a given type of cooperative will succeed or fail (Attwood and Baviskar 1987).…”

“…found that the members' commitment and cooperative management had a greater impact on the success of cooperatives than other factors. Biswas (2015) identified members' mutual trust, commitment, beliefs and attitudes towards their cooperative and the management style adopted to be important factors affecting a cooperative's success. Gupta (2014) discovered that cooperatives offer structures that not only secure their own benefits but also guarantee the individuals' interests.…”

“…The best solution to these problems is to organize rural communities in rural producers’ cooperatives. Cooperatives serve as tools to achieve socio-economic development by rural producers (Ahado et al 2022; Biswas 2015; Chiurciu et al 2022).…”

“…Despite the numerous studies conducted so far on cooperatives, few have been devoted to their management and organisational behaviour (Biswas 2015). In their study, (Höhler and Kühl 2014) explored the reasons underlying the differences in the status and success of cooperatives in different sectors and in different countries.…”

Farmer satisfaction and cocoa cooperative performance: evidence from Tocache, Peru

“…As a result, the respect of a certain sense of fairness is closely related with the general framework of satisfaction and commitment (Simons and Ingram, 1997). Cooperatives tend to produce better results when they are perceived as equitable, transparent and competent in addressing their members' specific needs (Biswas, 2015;Chen et al, 2007). That is, farmers' satisfaction and commitment are inseparable from the search of a collective sense of justice and fairness in a practical implementation of moral economies (Sayer, 2007).…”